Deribit cuts futures taker fees for high-volume trading desks

Deribit reduced taker fees for its four highest published volume tiers on 19 October at 12:00 UTC. Announced on 14 October, the change applies automatically to eligible perpetuals and futures, lowering the explicit cost of orders that immediately take liquidity from the book.[1]

Analysis: a small basis-point change can accumulate across repeated hedges. The saving depends on executed notional and the qualifying tier, rather than simply the cash posted as margin. A desk that mostly adds liquidity will experience a different benefit from one that frequently takes it.

At VIP6, the old charge on a hypothetical $100 million execution was $17,000; the new charge is $14,000. Opening and closing two equal $100 million taker legs saves $6,000. The 0.30-basis-point cut is about 17.6% of the former execution fee, but remains only 0.003% of notional. Neither percentage describes a change in the trade’s investment return.[1]

Analysis: moving from VIP6 to VIP7 creates no further saving on this futures taker rate, despite the higher volume requirement. A desk already at VIP6 needs to assess any other VIP7 benefits separately.

Qualification follows derivatives activity

The higher qualifying futures or options tier applies across both product types. Spot turnover is excluded. Upgrades run daily at 12:00 UTC; downgrades follow monthly review rules and can move only one tier at a time. Institutional customers trading through Coinbase Bermuda Limited as broker pay the published rates.[2]

Illustration: $900 million of options turnover plus $600 million of futures turnover does not meet the $1.5 billion VIP5 test. The separate-category rule prevents that aggregation.[2]

Separately managed accounts need another adjustment. Deribit’s SMA guidance says those subaccounts’ trades carry a broker fee, and their volume is excluded from the main account’s volume calculation. The account owner and manager also agree their own commercial terms. Pooling all visible activity into one fee-saving estimate would consequently overstate the qualifying denominator.[4]

Lower taker charges leave other price decisions intact

Maker rates are unchanged. Order instructions still determine fee treatment: post-only prevents ordinary taker execution, while hidden portions of iceberg orders can attract taker charges. The executed portion matters more than the general label “limit.”[2][3]

Analysis: for a strategy deciding whether to execute immediately or wait, the cut lowers the explicit price of immediacy. It does not establish that waiting for a maker fill is better or worse. A missed hedge or a change in market price can exceed a fraction of a basis point, while a passive order that fills can have a different combined spread-and-fee outcome. These are execution trade-offs, not measured effects of the tariff change.

Perpetual funding is also separate. Deribit transfers it between long and short holders, with positive rates paid by longs and negative rates by shorts. Rates are displayed on an eight-hour basis but accrue continuously; Deribit says it takes no fee from those transfers.[5]

Illustration: a constant $100 million position subject to an assumed 0.01% funding rate for a full eight hours would pay or receive $10,000, depending on side and rate direction. That hypothetical holding cost is more than the $3,000 execution-fee saving on one equally sized VIP6 taker trade. A lower dealing charge can improve a strategy’s economics while funding remains the larger variable.[5][1]

Cross-collateral accounts can also incur the published default 0.05% daily charge when a settlement-currency balance is negative. This charge concerns that negative balance, not the whole portfolio.[2]

The dated 19 October update is the applicable published rate change. The knowledge-base page still retains the previous taker figures in its older comprehensive table, so the explicit change notice and dated replacement table are necessary to read the tariff correctly.[1][2]

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